Alumni Profile

Julius E. Coles was appointed the Interim Director of the Andrew Young Center for Global Leadership beginning in July 2012 and has previously served as the Director of the Andrew Young Center for International Affairs and the Office of Global Education from April 2010 to June 2012. Before returning to Morehouse, he was President of Africare from 2002 to 2009. He has also served as the Director of Morehouse College’s Andrew Young Center for International Affairs from 1997 – 2002 and as the Director of the Director of Howard University’s Ralph J. Bunche International Affairs Center from 1994 - 1997. Most of Mr. Coles’ career of some twenty-eight years in the Foreign Service has been spent as a senior official with the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). While with USAID, Mr. Coles was Mission Director in Swaziland and Senegal and served in Vietnam, Morocco, Liberia, Nepal and Washington, D.C. He received a B.A. from Morehouse College (1964) and a Masters of Public Affairs from Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs (1966). He has also studied at the University of Geneva in Switzerland, the U.S. Department of State Foreign Institute’s Senior Seminar, the Federal Executive Institute and Institut de Français. Mr. Coles retired from the U.S. Government’s Foreign Service in 1994 with the rank of Career Minister. He received numerous awards including an Honorary Doctorate of International Affairs from The University of Findlay, Ohio (2012), the Bennie Achievement Award, Morehouse College (2010), Princeton-in-Africa Lifetime Achievement Award (2009), James Madison Medal from Princeton University (2007), Morehouse College National Alumnus of the Year for 2006, Amistad Achievement Award (2003), Distinguished Career Service Award (1995), the Presidential Meritorious Service Award (1983-1986), and was decorated by President Abdou Diouf of Senegal as Commander in the Order of Lion (1994). Mr. Coles is a member of the Boards of Health and Development International, Academy for Educational Development (AED), CAPA International and Gregory University (Uturu, Nigeria). In addition, he was elected as a Fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration, Sigma Pi Phi Fraternity, Omega Psi Phi Fraternity, Rotary Club of Atlanta, Council on Foreign Relations, the Bretton Woods Committee and has been appointed as a member of the UNESCO International Commission on the Gorée Memorial.